Linux

... and maybe the real Yun too.

So there's the Arduino Yun. That's quite a nice concept - an embedded Linux computer (MIPS based, YAY!) and microcontroller combined on one board.  Just such a shame it's an Atmel microcontroller and not a PIC32.

My latest acquisition, the Dragino Yun Shield is actually quite a nice bit of kit. It's the Linux portion of an Arduino Yun placed on a shield, so you can attach it to any board of your choosing.

It provides both a UART and an SPI connection to whatever it is plugged in to. And that includes chipKIT boards.

I don't know about you, but I have a huge pile of different Arduino-like boards here. (I have so many because I need to test UECIDE with them - or that's what I tell the "bank manager"). Many is the time I will have more than one of them plugged in to my computer. Often times I have programmed one of them with some code only to find it's not worked - and why hasn't it worked? Because I have had the wrong serial port selected in the IDE.

Getting Arduino and Arduino-like boards working properly under Linux can be a troublesome task if you are not familiar with how Linux works.

So I am going to introduce you to some of the basic tools you will need to work out why your board isn't working as you'd like it to work.